Description
This book presents the most comprehensive synthesis and analysis of major developments in reforming programs in modernizing the Chinese writing system. It traces the language policy and planning related developments for Chinese characters, with particular emphasis on post-1950 period in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the more recent challenges that technology, and particularly the World Wide Web, have posed for the language. Zhao Shouhui (PhD, University of Sydney) is Research Fellow in the Centre for Research in Pedagogy & Practice (CRPP) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. A professional language teacher by training, Zhao has been teaching and researching in Chinese applied linguistics for the past 17 years at 7 universities in five countries beginning in 1988, when he completed his MA in Applied Linguist at Renmin University of China (Beijing). Zhao is a member of All-China Society of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language and the Chinese and Oriental Language and Information Processing Association (COLIPS, Singapore).Zhao has sole authored about twenty refereed articles in areas of Chinese Language Pedagogy, Chinese Computational Linguistics and Higher Education, and he is also the primary co-author of three dual-authored Chinese language textbooks and the co-complier of two dictionaries. He has also contributed a number of ephemeral pieces (prose, short stories, comments, film reviews, etc…) to a range of literary publications and websites/broadcastings. Richard B. Baldauf Jr. (PhD, University of Hawai’i) is Associate Professor of TESOL in the School of Education at the University of Queensland and a Vice President on the Executive of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA). He has published numerous articles in refereed journals and books. Prologue.- Making Hanzi Accessible.- Reflections on New Perspectives.- New Challenges for a Digital Society.- Standardization as a Solution.- Influencing Outcomes.- Envisioning the Future.- Some Critical Issues.
